From Global Post
BANGKOK — Snatching up dogs and selling them to Vietnamese slaughterhouses is foul and dangerous work. Now, the criminals who ply this trade have invented a grisly weapon to make their job easier: makeshift tasers powerful enough to subdue a fleeing canine.
A vendor sits behind his stall of slaughtered dogs in suburban Hanoi. (HOANG DINH NAM/AFP/Getty Images)
Vietnam’s dognapping gangs sell their prey to abattoirs as black-market meat for roughly $5 to $10 per head. That’s good money in a country where toiling for minimum wage rakes in less than $5 a day.
But seizing dogs off the street requires both nerve and stealth. A tried and true technique requires two people: one drives a motorbike; the other, riding on the back, wields a makeshift metal lasso — a wire loop attached to the end of a pole.
Dogs’ necks are snared in the lasso and the animal is dragged behind the speeding bike.
As one dog thief explained to the news outlet VietnamNet: “I will pull the dog for five to seven meters until it is tired … then I cover its mouth with tape, tie its four legs and put it into a sack. Everything must happen fast without any sound.”
DIY tasers ofter advantages that lassos don’t. They allow gangs to more quickly and noiselessly subjugate pet or stray dogs.
To create the weapon, a metal spike is wired to a motorbike battery. The spike is then fixed to a long wooden pole (often with a crude pistol grip) and used to shock dogs into submission.
Dog snatchers are fixated on speed and silence, for good reason. If caught, they can face the lethal fury of an entire neighborhood.
Tales of dog thieves brutally kicked and clubbed to death by locals have flooded Vietnam’s press recently. In the last two years, at least 15 men have died from spontaneous mob beat-downs that can draw hundreds of people, including the elderly.
Read the full story HERE.
